


caged bird

by vanimiel



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Multi, Pity Sex, Red Hawke, anders supports her, anti mage hawke, bad impulsive decisions are made because bethany wants some semblance of control over her life, lesbian trauma, she has a meltdown over it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 07:15:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13429632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanimiel/pseuds/vanimiel
Summary: bethany doesn't know where she'll go. the world doesn't want women like her.





	caged bird

**Author's Note:**

> this is a really personal vent fic about my own experiences with lesbianism and trying to cope with a world who doesn't want girls like us. i'd appreciate if you didn't leave comments criticizing the portrayal of the characters or their decisions for that reason. i'm posting this because i think there might be other lesbians out there who could relate to this experience in some way.

Darktown is scary. It’s unpleasant, and gloomy, and the shadows that perpetually infect the walls and corners swirl and contort into inhuman shapes that frighten any young woman who doesn’t know if she’ll need that knife she brought along when she turns on the next street. But Darktown is where Anders is, and Anders in like a beacon of safety and warmth in the cold, tumultuous world that Bethany has found herself a victim to. So she braves it.

 

She has to go at night, when her mother and sister are asleep, to avoid confrontation about associating with the ‘wrong crowd’-- with a proud mage, a proud apostate, the kind of person that threatens stealing her away from the Hawke family preventing her from living her own life. Bethany wraps the cloak around her head and closes the door silently behind her, and doesn’t look back.

 

He’s awake when she arrives at his clinic, which is unusual. The tiring work of a night and day doctor hardly leaves him any time for rest, so on the rare occasion that he is alone when Bethany gently pushes past the clinic door, he’s usually asleep on his desk. It’s a blue moon, to see him awake and writing, and he lifts his head and give her one of those tired smiles. “Bethany. Good evening. Everything alright, I hope?”

 

Bethany smiles too, because of the way he always asks if she’s okay first thing upon seeing her. “Yes, I’m alright. Managing Marian and Mother best I can. But it’s no worse than it usually is.”

 

“Well, you know,” Anders briefly takes pause to look her in the eye. Every time he does that Bethany feels the kind of love she hasn’t felt since Carver died. The kind of unconditional, whole, selfless love. She wishes time would stop, and he would look at her forever, and feel loved and worthy and accepted and all those things someone is supposed to feel with their family, but Bethany only got from members of her own who are no longer alive. “If they ever cause you any trouble, I’ll always be here.”

 

Bethany smiles bright this time, turning her face to the floor because she’s shy. This is why she sees Anders. This is why she visits. Being treated like a real person who is whole, who is real and right and not crazy for feeling the way she does. Marian and Mother try to protect her from herself, from her magic. Anders tells her to let it flourish. Even Father wasn’t so bold. It’s new, and scary, but the exciting kind of scary that gives you butterflies. She sits down on one of the cots closest to his desk, hands folded in her lap, watching him work. 

 

They sit there for a few minutes, in silence, while Anders’ pen scritch-scratches against the parchment. They don’t need to talk much; being in Anders’ mere presence is enough to calm Bethany’s nerves and warm her insides. She takes this time to look at him;  _ really  _ look at him, which is something she feels she hasn’t done many times before. 

 

His nose stands out to her. It’s strong; crooked, but in a pleasing way, like he broke it once for something he was proud of fighting for. His jawline sharp, his cheekbones high, his golden hair tied halfway messily back into some kind of ponytail. She doesn’t need to see his eyes from this angle to know how they shine.

 

He’s not unattractive, she thinks. Maybe even the opposite; appealing, cute, handsome. The sort of man Mother would love for her to bring home, if he wasn’t a mage. Tall, an infectious laugh, has his head screwed right on his shoulders. If he wasn’t a mage.

 

Bethany gets a thought, then. A terrible, awful, insidious idea blooms in her mind, an idea she knows she’ll regret, an idea she knows is bad, bad, bad. But she loves it. And it festers, growing like a fungus in her mind and taking over her body, her actions. By the time she’s already reasoned she’s ready to go down in flames for what she’s about to do, she’s already standing, walking behind Anders, fingers in his hair.

 

He makes a small noise of surprise, something cute, as her fingers weave in and out of his golden locks. He laughs, soft, like something you’d expect from a man so compassionate. “You can braid it, if you like.” 

 

She doesn’t. “It’s soft,” she says, instead. “Like you.”

 

This time, he makes some kind of incredulous snort. “I’m soft?”

 

“Yes,” she replies in earnest, twirling his hair around her fingers. “Soft and warm and… safe. You’re safe. I can’t be hurt with you around.”

 

He’s silent for a few moments, and Bethany does indeed begin braiding his hair. “Soft is a new one. You flatter me.”

 

A few more quiet beats pass, and Bethany’s heart skips a beat as she leaves his hair half-braided, resting her hands on his shoulders for just a second before pivoting on her heel, turning herself to straddle him in his chair. Anders gawks.

 

“Bethany, what are you--,”

 

She silences him with a kiss, messy and uncertain and nervous. When she pulls away there’s a fire in her eyes, like the magic that lies in her soul, except this is something she’s resolute about. Anxious she may be, she’s ready to make her choice.

 

“I want you, Anders.”

 

Even she doesn’t entirely know what she means by that. She wants love. She wants acceptance. She wants such an important decision to be made entirely on her own, with someone she trusts. She wants to be free of the chain choking her neck. 

 

Anders looks her in the eye, like he’s done so many times before, but this time there’s something there that isn’t just love. He seems sad, like she had taken his hope and ripped it from him, but also accepting, as if there is no other way for them to be. She thinks, vaguely, in the midst of her flurrying thoughts trying to make sense of what she’s doing, that he is looking at her with pity.

 

“If-- If you don’t, that’s fine. I don’t mind--,”

 

It is she who is silence by a kiss this time; soft and gentle, just like the man himself. She melts into him, or in a way she thinks she should, pressing her breasts against his chest and putting her hands on places where she thinks they might belong. He seems much more experienced than her, and she gladly lets him take the reigns. 

 

“It’s okay,” he says, breath warm on her lips. “If you want to, it’s fine.”

 

They kiss more. He cradles the back of her head, a kind of intimacy she isn’t used to, but it feels good, so good. She presses up against him as much as she can, trying to eliminate any distance, trying replace the anxiety and doubts with the sensation of her body against another’s. She wants Anders to be the only thing she can think about. No magic. No Marian. No dead brothers. Just Anders.

 

He moves lightly, as if he’s scared he’ll break her, tracing kisses along her jaw , her neck, her collarbone. He bites gently, testing the waters, eliciting a small gasp from her which prompts him to stop. “That okay?”

 

“Yes,” she says. She doesn’t want him to talk. She wants him to act. “Yes.”

 

She wraps her hand around his head, undoing his half-heartedly tied braid she had fumbled with earlier. She likes this; his hands on her shoulders, pushing her shirt off her shoulders, mouth on her collarbone leaving a trail of little red marks. She can feel him hardening beneath her, and she rocks her hips forward as a little test. He groans, and so does she; perhaps she should have expected the rubbing of the harsh fabric of her underwear against her clit would feel good to her, too. 

 

He stops again, and Bethany almost groans aloud in frustration. She wants him to get on with it. Out of anxiety or arousal or weepy, barely-contained anger, she can’t really tell.

 

“You’ve never done this before.” His voice is but a breath against her breast. “Have you?”

 

She shakes her head furiously, realizes that he can’t see, and replies just as softly, “No.”

 

He still hesitates, so Bethany urges him on. “I want you to be my first, Anders.” She grinds again against his hardness. “I want you to have this from me.”

 

He seems to accept that as a reasonable enough consolation. “You tell me things that don’t feel good,” he says as his hands roam beneath her shirt to play with her breasts, “and I’ll stop. Okay?”

 

She sighs, his hands cupping her breasts, thumbs rolling over her nipples. “Okay.” 

 

It amazes her how he seems to innately know what to do to make her feel good, things that would have never occurred to her. He asks if she could take her shirt off, and when she complies, his mouth is on her breast, and her underwear is wetter than she ever thought it could be. He slides his fingers between her legs, rubbing at the wetness, and her hips buck. 

 

“Anders,” she gasps. This is more attention than she’s ever received in her life. She is the focus, the star, the center of the universe. It sends her reeling. “What about you?” 

 

Anders slips his fingers in her pants, rubbing at her clit directly, and she moans long and loud. “Don’t worry about me.” 

 

Bullshit, she thinks. Her hands draped over his back, she lets one fall to be between his own legs, clumsily palming him through his pants. His rhythm falters, breath hitching, and Bethany feels something like victory. When Anders decides to stick one, two fingers into her dripping cunt, it feels like some kind of retaliation. 

 

“Maker,” Bethany groans. Between Anders fingerfucking her and the attention he’s paying to her breasts, she’s shocked she hasn’t come. But she doesn’t want to. Not yet. 

 

It’s hard to do, with the way she’s desperately grinding down on his fingers, but she manages to free his cock from his pants and rub him herself. His breath turns hot and heavy on her chest, and Bethany grins something giddy, out of arousal and the smug satisfaction that she’s  _ doing  _ this. She’s open, unchained, after years of being locked away, hidden away from prying eyes. For the first time, she feels as if she’s being seen for someone she truly is.

 

“Anders.” Her cunt clenches around his fingers, and her breath catches in her throat. “I want you-- in me. I want you in me.” 

 

She can barely hear him murmur  _ okay  _ before he wraps his hands around her waist, hiking her up to be on top of where she should be. She doesn’t care about protection. If she catches something and dies, she’ll die smiling knowing it was because she fucked the apostate mage her sister hates. She’ll die spitting in the face of what her sister ever wanted for her. 

 

When Anders slides in it sends her mind spinning. She’s never been so full, so wet, so wanting. Breathy moans come from her mouth and his, and she flings her arms around his shoulders to have some kind of grounding. Anders bucks his hips up, and she grinds hers down, and she is close, so close, so close. She raises her head, looking past Anders, imagining her sister appearing in the doorway, how appalled and disgusted she would be to find her precious baby sister fucking the apostate. If she weren’t so close to her climax, she’d grin wildly at the thought; her precious virginity is his now. He owns her, and it’s just how Bethany wanted. She almost cackles. 

 

She doesn’t cackle. Instead, she gasps harshly, digging her nails into his back as she comes harder than she ever had, sharply jerking her hips into him. Her face buried in the crook of his neck, she feels him come too, warmth filling her insides and his small, sharp gasps in her ears. 

 

They sit there in silence for long minutes after they’ve both ridden out their orgasms. Bethany hugs Anders close to her chest, and begins to cry. 

 

* * *

 

It’s hard to ignore what you’ve done when the intoxicating cloud of arousal isn’t heavy in the air. Bethany clothes herself and she still feels exposed, almost violated, even though she gave herself to Anders willingly and he was nothing but gentle. She wipes some lasting tears from her face and says, “Sorry.”

 

Anders looks at her with the same kind of pity he did earlier. “It’s-- you don’t need to apologize, Bethany. You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

 

But she  _ did  _ do something wrong. Marian would be furious with her. She’s furious with herself for letting spite and anger and bad impulses influence her decision making. Trying to remember how sure of herself she was before all this seems foreign, an impossible dream. How did she manage to fake such confidence? How did she not break down while on top of him, while she was in her? It's all she can think about. Him inside her. Invading her, even though she welcomed it. She hugs herself, trying to retreat into her own body, trying to disappear.

 

When Anders reaches a comforting hand out to her, she backs away. It doesn’t calm his nerves. He sighs, but doesn’t make another attempt. “If-- you feel anything bad or off just-- come to me. I can treat sexual maladies, too.”

 

Bethany nods, eyes glued to the floor, avoiding Anders’ presence as much as she can. She wants to go home. Not to their dilapidated house in Kirkwall, no; back to Lothering, before the Blight, when Carver was still alive, when things were still good and she was still happy. When she still had a chance of living the way she wanted.

 

* * *

 

 

She doesn’t see Anders the next day, or the day after. The only  _ bad  _ or  _ off  _ she feels is that of deep, stomach-rotting guilt, the kind that makes it hard to exist in the same space as her sister, let alone look her in the eyes. She doesn’t  _ know _ . Marian asks her what the red marks along her collarbone are and she doesn’t reply. Refuses to. Locks that secret up in her chest and suffocates it with her hands. During the act, she would have reveled in the horrified look on Marian’s face when she was forced to face the facts. But now?

 

“It’s nothing,” she says. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

 

Marian presses, but she doesn’t want a fight. Defending herself would devolve into a shouting match and admitting her sin would be worse.  _ I want to help you, _ Marian says.  _ I want you to be safe.  _

 

_ I don’t want to be safe,  _ Bethany wants to say.  _ I want to be happy. _

 

She doesn’t. She crawls into her bed and pulls the sheets up to her nose, taking an early night. 

 

* * *

 

“Are you sterile?”

 

Anders sputters, not expecting the question. “What?”

 

It’s been a few days since the incident, as she has chosen to refer to it. It seems so dramatic for something so trifling, but it’s the only thing that fits. Anders has just seen off a patient, and she’s sitting on the floor, leaning against his desk. 

 

It’s an important thing to ask. So she does again. 

 

“I don’t-- I heard Grey Wardens can’t have children.” She seems tired, like she hasn’t slept in days. “Is that true?” 

 

He sighs. Bethany feels like it’s because she’s been too much. Too trying. Exhausting on the nerves. “Yes. There’s no risk of pregnancy from me.” 

 

“Hm.” She’s disgusted at how disappointed she is. If she had Anders’ child, it would almost certainly be a mage. Another mage in the Hawke family. Marian would want to give it to the circle, but she couldn’t. It’d be her child. Bethany’s flesh and blood. Having a mage child to call her own to nurture, protect, love the way a mage child deserves… she almost wishes she could. 

 

On the other side of the coin, the thought of having Anders’ child makes her stomach turn, and she can’t quite put her finger on why.

 

“I would have named him Carver,” she says.

 

“Hm?”

 

“If we did have a child.” She murmurs against the stale clinic air, staring into nothing, imagining a better life. “And if he was a boy. I’d name him Carver.” It’s a foolish, childish thing to be daydreaming like this. But these days, she’ll take anything she can get. “After my brother.”

 

Anders sits on a cot, leaning down towards her, but she doesn’t look up to meet his eyes. “You have a brother?” 

 

“Had.” It still leaves such a vile taste in her mouth, having to talk about her twin in the past tense. Sometimes she still turns and expects him to be by her side, or she wants to ask him for his opinion on which scarf to wear today before remembering that he’s not there to answer. Carver. Her eyes glaze. He would know what to do, she thinks. She could help her get out of this. “He died while we were escaping the Blight.”

 

“Oh.” This is where he’d hug her, she thinks, if she hadn’t been acting so cagey recently. “I’m sorry.”

 

“He…,” She swallows thickly. It’s against her better judgement to continue, let her mind run its own race, like a spinning top losing momentum and going wild. The last time she let herself lose control like this left her where she is now. So she reigns it in. Snaps shut, like a book. “...Nevermind.”

 

Anders doesn’t press, but he doesn’t comfort, either. She wishes he would, even if she knows she would be repulsed by his touch. 

  
  


* * *

 

It’s not until they meet that pretty young elf girl atop Sundermount that she realizes, like gently rising sun in the dawn.

 

Her name is Merrill. She has bright green eyes, and a small pearlescent smile, and when she moves she flitters around like a small bird, all light and airy and dance-like. Her voice sounds like tinkling bells and when she gets lost in conversation, she laughs a breathy, nervous laugh, and looks at you with those green eyes all sheepish. And she’s a mage. A blood mage. A blood mage who is steadfast in her beliefs and proud of who she is.

 

Bethany is enchanted. 

 

More than that-- infatuated. As a child, Bethany had thought all those fairy tales of princesses falling in love at first sight with whatever prince or knight crosses their path silly and childish. But with the way she feels now, looking at Merrill, she thinks that maybe there was some truth in the fantasy. 

 

Marian takes her aside later and says,  _ I don’t want you associating with her.  _ The last time she said this, it was about Anders, who Bethany let fuck her raw at his desk only a week beforehand. Maybe the nausea-inducing guilt that followed is a sign that this time, she should listen. But her heart didn’t feel lighter than air when thinking about Anders like it does about Merrill. Merrill, Merrill, Merrill. The name lilts on her tongue. 

 

“Okay,” she lies.

 

* * *

  
  


“Anders.”

 

She looks frazzled, hair unbrushed and wild eyes. She’s been up all night thinking about this, trying to figure the best way to phrase her... apology? Statement of truth? Confession? All she knows is that if she bottles up her thoughts any longer, she might start cracking and seeping out all her feelings. 

 

“Yes?” He rises, making a move like he’s going to touch her, but she swipes his hand away. She wants to be free for this. “Are you alright?”

 

“Yes, I’m fine. Don’t-- I need--,” Her eyes screw shut, palms framing the side of her head as she struggles to gather her thoughts. “I need… to talk… at my own pace. So please… don’t touch me. Okay?”

 

He nods, opening his posture, ready to be embracing and warm at any moment should Bethany need. She breathes deep, trying to force back her tears she’s beginning to shed out of the sheer force of her emotion.

 

“I wanted… you… to take me, first… because.” She finds is difficult to look Anders in the eye as she speaks, as if avoiding his gaze will lessen the chance that it actually happened. But the fact that it did is why she’s even having this conversation right now. So she swallows her guilt and continues. “It’s a precious thing, a girl’s-- a woman’s… virginity. You know? And Marian…,” she snorts something incredulous, but her tone makes it seem sad. “Marian… hates you. Because you’re an apostate and proud of it and… she doesn’t want me around you. And I wanted… I wanted to rub it in her face that I let you take something so… sacred from me, this… this  _ mage  _ that she hated so much, but then after I… I felt so terrible.” 

 

She’s crying now, furiously rubbing at the wetness on her face as she continues her winding, long-winded confession. “I felt so bad afterwards even though I-- I think I enjoyed it during, but I felt so guilty and bad and dirty and--,” she shakes her head violently. “But then I met this girl, Anders. Her name-- her name is Merrill, and she-- she’s like you, she’s a mage and proud of it and she’s so-- she’s so-- I don’t think I like men, Anders.”

 

Bethany is fully sobbing at this point, choking on her words and unable to keep the tremors of a meltdown from wracking her small frame. “A-And I’m… sorry, for making you do that to me, and I’m sorry for the way I acted after, and I-I’m… sorry, I’m sorry…,”

 

For a few moments, all that can be heard in Anders’ clinic are the sound of her heaving sobs, but he breaks the silence by leaning close to her head and murmuring, “can I hug you?”

 

She takes a shaky breath, and nods.

 

Anders hugs her tight, tight, tight, like she’s never been hugged before in her life, and she presses her sodden face deep into her chest. She would feel bad about soaking it, but she already feels so bad about so much. Guilty, guilty, guilty. 

 

She feels him press his nose into her hair. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “It’s okay to make mistakes, Bethany. It’s okay to do things you regret. You’re young. You’re still figuring yourself out. Okay?”

 

She sniffles, then nods.

 

“I promise you didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to. I can only hope I can say the same.”

 

“N-no,” she tries to smile. “That was just me. Being stupid.”

 

Anders laughs, but not cruelly. “You’re not stupid,” he says. “You’re just stuck. The world isn’t kind to mages. You’re doing just fine.”

 

In the incredibly chaotic, unpredictable world Bethany has been unlucky enough to be born into, Anders is one of the only pillars of stability and trust. She clings to him like a lifeline straining on its last thread. She clings to him and doesn’t let go.


End file.
